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Saturday, September 10, 2016

Apple’s iPhone 7 Latest Snazzy Salvo in Encryption War

New iPhone 7 – Highest Level of Encryption

The new iPhone 7 which was announced on September 7 in San Francisco by Apple CEO Tim Cook is said to have the highest level of encryption. Being sleek, shiny and water resistant, it has a telephoto lens for sort of zooming normally reserved for real cameras. Very soon, millions of individuals would be going for an iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus where each will be equipped with the latest Apple product of super-duper encrypted operating system, iOS 10.

Moreover, millions would be upgrading their older iPhone and iPads to iOS 10 also. This would be great profits for the Silicon Valley tech giant. For the FBI, it would mean big worries. The data on these services would be out of reach for law enforcement agencies almost overnight, across the country.

This is with regards to the latest instance in the dispute concerning the rights of individuals in having secure data and the reach of law enforcement to search out criminals. So far, though it has been a war conducted by lawyers and software engineers, a good resolution could only come from Congress with laws which would strike a consensus.

Apple Committed to Highest Level of Encryption

It has already taken a long time with months passing since the attempt of FBI to force Apple in building backdoor in its software for unlocking the encrypted iPhone of San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook. With Apple’s refusal, the agency had paid hackers to do the same which had placed Apple in the hot seat.

Minus a guarantee of privacy, the company were aware that selling iPhone would be all but impossible and people would not trust its new services like the iCloud Keychain that enables users to store their passwords as well as credit card details in their smartphone. The company has subsequently intensified its encryption efforts, though Tim Cook did not devote time mentioning about it during the annual event of the company, recently. But there were new iPhones and Apple Watches to be disclosed.

In August, Ivan Krstic, Apple security expert had offered a introduction on the iOS features at the BlackHat USA hacker conference in Las Vegas and Craig Federighi, Senior Vice President of software engineering, had reassured developers in June that Apple will be committed to the highest level of encryption.

User Privacy – Vital to Company

At the conference of the developers in June, Apple had stressed on its end-to-end encryption and had conversed on its work on degree of difference privacy. This enables the company to maintain personal privacy at the time of examining as well as knowing from crowdsourced details.

We are aware of what Apple had done in the earlier iPhone in order to protect user information. The present iPhone model, the 6S, tends to keep your personal information locked away with encryption and the company has informed that it puts in a lot of effort not to collect huge amount of data on customers like its peers, Google and Facebook.

As the best-selling product of Apple, the iPhone has been vital to the company’s stance with regards to user privacy. Federighi had mentioned that all this great work in iOS 10 would be meaningless if it came at the expense of one’s privacy.